We don’t encourage activism because it brings you too close to idolatry. It traps you in the Western mode of thinking and material reality. We don’t promote “Christian” virtues as law because it reduces religion to mere legalism. What we promote is God’s own standard for human government: the Law of Noah.
Every little bit helps, and we can understand Noah in terms of proximity to the ideal. First and most important is that heart-led mystical approach to thinking, which means rejecting Western materialistic logic. We do not trust human intellect to lead, but use it only as a tool for organizing conduct according to a higher, mystical moral understanding of God’s character. Second, we treat all of Creation as alive, sentient and willful. There are millions of persons who aren’t humans, down to the smallest subatomic particles. Third, we assert that human government must stand on the family, clan and tribe. Your first line of government is the folk with whom you share DNA and/or covenant commitments.
Those are prerequisites. We mention them because folks whose first language is English never heard of such things. These elements were the universal norm of human life until the birth of Greco-Roman Civilization, the predecessor to Western Civilization. Even the Greeks and Romans understood that your first line of government was family, but they pulled too many government functions into centralized government hands. They did tend to think of their world as alive and sentient, but they rejected revelation in favor of a broad mixture of heathen religions. With no consensus of how to approach it, Roman Law ignored it. Western Civilization rejected all of it.
From our perspective here at the end of Western Civilization, we aren’t surprised that Noah is an impossible standard in our world. But we do see that certain elements in modern political culture do approach Noah here and there. The single strongest element of Noah in our world is political nationalism. That’s as close as we’ll get to tribal social structure. While the other two prerequisites are out of the question, we can engage them for ourselves. That’s how we know better than to get too deeply involved in ambient politics.
We are left with giving some half-hearted support to candidates and organizations that promote nationalism. Not the mean-n-nasty version, but the core idea of decentralized government. Centralization is the single greatest political threat to our obligation to Noah. We believe that a loose confederation bound by custom, not law, is far better than a huge centralized secular state. The less centralized, the better. We can get behind that with some level of enthusiasm and not sin.
If you can’t escape the urge to get involved in the national political conversation, first you need to recognize that it’s not a conversation. It’s a propaganda war. It’s two entirely alien cultures yelling past each other. As long as you keep that in mind, there’s nothing wrong with sharing ideas with various partisan individuals and organizations, so long as you stick with the one thing that matters to us under Noah: decentralize.
And it’s possible to approach some element of tribal association via the Internet. That is, while there are precious few Noah-minded believers in any one place, there is a surprising number of folks out there on the Internet, scattered all over geographically, who can share our convictions to varying degrees. Isn’t that what our parish does with religion? You can do the same with politics. Otherwise, you’ll be pretty isolated and you’ll feel like Noah himself building that big boat for just your immediate family. We aren’t facing a literal flood any more, so let’s try to build a virtual agenda that we can support.
I’m not going to organize a Noahic PAC (political action committee). There’s way too much money in politics already, a major waste of resources. What we need is some form of direct witness to the world about what we believe really matters. And given the essential mysticism, I’m not about to crack the whip about organizations and candidates. You have to find your own sense of moral necessity according to your divine calling. What I will do is provide a little prophetic guidance to get you thinking, even if you aren’t going to follow my specific example. God forbid you should ever get the idea that my choices are binding on you. What matters is that we all agree how we approach the question and what’s essential.
Keep in mind that I adhere to the King David’s image in Psalms about how God runs the world. Human politics outside of a Law Covenant will always be likened to herding cattle. The cows will never understand what God is up to, but respond to a very limited range of prodding in various directions as God sees fit. In our minds, the current government isn’t His “anointed” but is His choice for the alpha bulls, so to speak. Meanwhile, the Devil isn’t sneaking around the herd trying to undermine God. His job is to see if he can fool people into buying his temptations, and then implementing God’s wrath from time to time as a result. Satan is our enemy, not God’s.
Trump is the current alpha bull. He’ll be butchered in due time, but for now, it’s wise to avoid getting in his way. It doesn’t matter what Trump believes; we know he doesn’t embrace Noah. But God has put him at the head of the herd, and it tells us more about where the herd is going than it does about Trump. A critical element in what God is doing includes crushing some elements of those who naturally oppose Trump because they oppose where God is taking the herd. If you stand with Trump’s enemies, you’ll probably get hurt. It may still be your calling to stand there, but don’t complain about what falls on you. Try to separate your personal revulsion from your heart-led sense about what God is doing.
You can view Trump rather like Daniel viewed the various Babylonian rulers. Notice that Daniel gave proper support to each, even the last one. He faithfully reported to Belshazzar what the writing on the wall meant, and knew it could also mean his own death. I honestly believe Trump’s time is short, but until we get there, I’m not going to agitate against him.
Instead, I’ll give him the same support Daniel did. God is my True Ruler in Heaven, but I’ve been loaned out to Trump for a season. If you live in America, you are also on loan from God to the government earthly political considerations. If your job is to oppose, then do it righteously. Otherwise, try to find where God intends you to serve in support of Trump. Not his agenda, but the man himself. We support what God says is in his best interest, so you can bet I’ll oppose his support of Israel. More importantly, I’ll be fighting the neocons tooth and nail, just as I will the globalists who serve Soros.
It means I’ll support the evisceration of the globalist Intelligence Community. I’ll resist those folks in the Pentagon who want any war they can provoke. Anything that reduces centralization is a good move. Anything that devolves government power down to a lower level is a blessing, even if it means local taxes go up while federal taxes go down. That’s how it should be, though less of any tax is a good thing. I’m all for firing millions of government bureaucrats, because whatever it is they do is surely better at the local level, more responsive to the local population. I’m all for accountability.
Because our current system is so utterly wrong on almost everything, and it’s been steadily getting worse, I know Trump’s presidency means bloodshed, both literal and figurative. America is too deeply invested in moral evil for God’s wrath to be gentle. I’m not cheering human suffering; I’m cheering the hand of God revealing His character. I know that I’m standing right beside some folks who will suffer greatly from His wrath and some of it simply must fall on me, as well. But I also know that the Father will moderate things on my behalf because that’s how His glory works.
So Trump is a lumber ox destroying a lot of stuff that was of no moral value in the first place. Look for it to happen. Despite the drama, despite the wishful thinking inherent in the propaganda of his enemies, we should not be deceived about how this will play out. If it’s not Trump, someone else will step in with an even harder iron hand.
That’s what God is doing.
